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ENGLEWOOD, Colo. --When Von Miller returns from an ACL injury for the 2014 season, he'll have a new pass rusher to complement him.
The Broncos on Wednesday agreed to terms with free agent defensive end DeMarcus Ware, who has accumulated 117 sacks in his career -- the most in Dallas Cowboys history.
@DeMarcusWare looking forward to working with ya big bro! #sack — Von Miller (@Millerlite40) March 12, 2014
Ware spent the first nine years of his career with Dallas, the team that originally selected him with the 11th overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft.
A seven-time Pro Bowler and seven-time All-Pro, Ware has led the league in sacks twice -- in 2008 and 2010. His 0.83 career sacks per game trail only Pro Football Hall of Famer Reggie White among players appearing in at least 50 games.
He has notched double-digit sacks in all but two of his nine NFL seasons, including his career-high output of 20 quarterback takedowns in 2008. That year, he became the first player since 1994 to post 15 sacks, 25 tackles for loss and five forced fumbles in a single season. Ware's new teammate Miller became the second player to accomplish that feat in 2012.
The second-highest sack producer in the NFL since he entered the league in 2005, Ware also put up 19.5 quarterback takedowns in 2011.
Ware had played in all 16 games in every season of his career until last year, when he missed the first three games of his career due to injury. He has started 140 of his 141 career regular-season games played.


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Last month I began fiddling around crocheting some little vessels. I found this solo skein of yarn in the reduced bin at Joann's and did not hesitate to buy it as I really love a self striping yarn.
It's a micro fiber yarn made by Premier Yarns (more information about it can be found here). I really love it's vibrant colors and had fun just trying it out in different ways. I experimented with crocheting a variety of vessels (one with a lid), I knit two gnomes (faces made with a different yarn) and then I taught myself how to to crochet a square and just barely had enough to finish the ninth one so I stitched them into a bigger square using thread. I had not one bit of yarn left over from these projects.


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This article is more than 1 year old
Googlegate: Mapping a scandal of global proportions
Google is not above the law
Opinion While the rest of us have generally been enjoying the sunshine and warm weather for the past few weeks, there has been a permanent cloud over Mountain View, as the storm over Google's capturing of Wi-Fi content with its Street View cars has developed.
That storm now threatens significant reputational damage to Google, not least because dozens of countries are considering initiating criminal prosecutions against it and indeed a number of police investigations have already begun.
On April 22nd 2010, news broke that Google's Street View cars had been surreptitiously collecting Media Access Control (MAC) addresses and Service Set Identifiers (SSID) from Wi-Fi networks as they roamed the planet taking photographs of our houses.
Street View has been contentious enough from a privacy perspective, with many people concerned about the dangers such activity presents, and has been in the headlines frequently. But once it was discovered that Google was capturing Wi-Fi identifiers as well, the controversy snowballed.
Some people don't see the problem - they contend that the data Google was collecting is harmless and that the fuss is all about nothing. As a privacy advocate, one does not have the liberty to be restricted to such a narrow field of vision.
We all need to understand that Google already has an overwhelming quantity of data on a significant percentage of the global population, so having the ability to now marry that existing data with geo-location data gives the search giant even more insight into who and where we are.
We accept that some people really don't care if Google has all this data and information on us, but at the same time many of us do care, many people find it offensive and many people feel they have no control over that data or how it is used.
One can talk about human rights or countless other legislative measures designed to protect our privacy, but at a fundamental level it should be pretty obvious that if you wish to leverage commercial value from private and personal data, it should be done ethically and with consent. This is not because the law states it should, but because it is simple common courtesy and illustrates a level of respect which in turn leads to stronger confidence that such data will not be abused or used inappropriately. One can hardly expect people to trust that data is safe from abuse if the organisations collecting that data are doing so in such an underhanded and clandestine manner. This is not the way to instil confidence and is likely to cause damage to a brand's reputation.
That said, had the collection been limited to just MAC addresses and SSID it is likely that by now the storm would have blown itself out and Eric Schmidt would probably be relaxing by one of his pools marking the incident up as another victory illustrating the strength of his brand.
However, within three weeks the scandal gained new traction when Google admitted via its blog that it had also been soaking up the actual contents of unencrypted Wi-Fi communications with its Street View data sponge.
This was a much more serious issue and it was clear from the disclosure that Google knew this as it immediately apologised, calling the collection an accident. This is significant because intercepting and retaining those communications is in many regions a criminal act, so it was critical that Google attempt to mitigate the situation by denying intent – an important factor in assessing a case for criminal prosecution. We were immediately unconvinced that this activity could have been carried out accidentally and having been involved in large technology projects for the better part of fifteen years, it seemed untenable to me that this "rogue code" could have found its way into the project and been deployed without anyone knowing it was there. Within ten minutes of Google disclosing this information on its blog, we released our response on our web site.
Then on my blog I explained the basic principles of project development and deployment in the IT sector, discussing a number of core stages that such projects would generally go through. It was not a specialised view and I accept that many projects may differ in many ways, but those four core stages of design, development, testing and deployment are pretty much the standard framework for all large-scale technology projects.
With that in mind it is clear to see that at some point this code should have been noticed. At the design stage technical specifications should have been written which would have been used to determine the scope and functionality of the project by the development team. It is absurd to suggest that the development team would then create software outside the boundaries of those specifications. It simply doesn't happen that way and no amount of protest by Google will lead me to believe otherwise.
But even if we give Google the benefit of doubt at this stage, the testing stage of the project would use these same technical specifications to audit the data coming back from their simulated tests. Any data which could not be explained by those technical specifications would raise alarms and be investigated. That is the whole point of testing software before it is deployed - to ensure that it is doing what it was designed to do and that it is stable.


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Friday, July 01, 2005
Cavatappi Pasta Salad with Walnut-Sage Pesto
Cavatappi Pasta Salad with Walnut-Sage Pesto(Adapted from CL)
2 1/2 cups (1/2-inch) cubed peeled butternut squash
Cooking spray
3/4 teaspoon salt, divided
1/2 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
2 1/2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons fresh sage leaves
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons extravirgin olive oil
1 garlic clove
1/3 cup fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
3 cups cooked cavatappi pasta (about 6 ounces uncooked)
4 cups torn spinach
1/4 cup thinly sliced shallots
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 450°.
Arrange squash in a single layer on a jelly-roll pan coated with cooking spray. Lightly coat squash with cooking spray; sprinkle evenly with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Bake at 450° for 20 minutes or until squash is tender, stirring after 10 minutes. Cool squash slightly.
Combine 1/4 teaspoon salt, parsley, and next 5 ingredients (through garlic) in a food processor; process until finely chopped, scraping sides. With processor on, slowly pour broth through food chute, processing until well blended.
Combine the remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt, squash, pasta, and pesto in a large bowl, and toss well to coat. Add spinach, shallots, and pepper; toss to combine.
Serves 4
2 comments:
- Anonymous10/17/2005 01:01:00 PM
This looks so good. I love squash and sage together. And so Fall-ish! I really need to try this soon :)
ReplyDelete - Anonymous9/03/2010 08:21:00 PM
Colors are just beautiful and I loved the taste. Next time I would reduce the chicken broth as my sauce was too thin. I w ould also purchase the spinach at Whole Foods as mine had holes in it, so I am making an extra trip to the market. Don't forget a good wine and garlic bread.
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I like having all my theorems, examples, defintions etc. numbered in a single sequence. Is it possible to have LaTeX number my floating figures in sequence with them as well? I.e.:
Theorem 1.1 A theorem!
(A pretty picture)
Fig. 1.2: caption.Definition 1.3 A definition.
I presume this would be pretty difficult to implement because of how floats, well, float! But hopefully there's some clever package that does it. I'm using amsthm, so solutions compatible with that would be most useful, but I'm certainly still interested in other answers.


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One of the real pleasures afforded in reading Charles Darwin's correspondence is the discovery of areas of research on which he never published, but which interested him deeply. We can gain many insights about Darwin's research methods by following these 'letter trails' and observing how correspondence served as a vital research tool for him.
One such story begins with the preparation of a new edition of On the Origin of Species (the fourth) in 1866. Darwin made substantive changes to every new edition of Origin; often the changes were inspired by recent criticism or new research. In 1865, George Douglas Campbell, the eighth duke of Argyll, had written an article that appeared in parts in the magazine Good Words entitled the 'Reign of law'. The article contained an argument about beauty in nature.
The duke, who was best known for his interest in geology and ornithology, claimed:
Spangles of the emerald are no better in the battle of life than spangles of the ruby. A crest of flame does not enable a Humming Bird to reach the curious recesses of an orchid better than a crest of sapphire. … The evidence is indeed abundant, that ornament and variety are provided for in nature for themselves and by themselves, separate from all other use whatever. Any theory on the origin of species which is too narrow to hold this fact, must be taken back for enlargement and repair.
Reign of Law, p. 231.
Campbell's was only the latest statement of a common argument against Darwin's theory, one he had dealt with already in Origin but which he now felt compelled to expand on as he prepared a fourth edition of the book.
Darwin began with the argument that 'the idea of the beauty of any particular object obviously depends on the mind of man, irrespective of any real quality in the admired object; and that the idea is not an innate and unalterable element in the mind,' and continued, 'On the view of beautiful objects having been created for man's gratification, it ought to be shown that there was less beauty on the face of the earth before man appeared than since he came on the stage. Were the beautiful volute and cone shells of the Eocene epoch, and the gracefully sculptured ammonites of the Secondary period, created that man might ages afterwards admire them in his cabinet?'
After mentioning sexual selection as another instance of beauty-with-a-purpose, Darwin turned to the plant world and remarked:
that the gaily-coloured fruit of the spindle-wood tree and the scarlet berries of the holly are beautiful objects, will be admitted by every one. But this beauty serves merely as a guide to birds and beasts, that the fruit may be devoured and the seeds thus disseminated: I infer that this is the case from having as yet found in every instance that seeds, which are embedded within a fruit of any kind, that is within a fleshy or pulpy envelope, if it be coloured of any brilliant tint, or merely rendered conspicuous by being coloured white or black, are always disseminated by being first devoured.
Origin, 4th ed., p. 240.
… or are they?
Towards the end of September 1866 Darwin received a letter from Fritz Müller, a German naturalist who had emigrated to Brazil in 1852, and who had begun to correspond with Darwin only a year earlier. The letter is now incomplete; Darwin had pasted one fragment of it into his experimental notebook for reference.
What interested Darwin so much was something that had been on his mind since writing that 'in every instance' seeds were surrounded by a fleshy pulp and 'always disseminated by being first devoured'. Müller had noted that seeds that fell to the ground as soon as the capsule opened were commonly dark-coloured, but those that remained attached to the valve were brightly coloured – or had brightly coloured surrounds – to attract attention.
Seeds use to fall to the ground, as soon as the seed-capsules open and in this case they are commonly dark-coloured; if on the contrary, they remain attached to the open valvæ, in all the cases, I know, either the seeds themselves, or the arillus, or the interior of the valvæ are brightly coloured so as to attract the attention, which may carry the seeds to distant places. Thus the large valvæ of aTabernaemontana are filled with a bright red pulpa;—the black and shining seeds of a Paullinia are half-imbedded into a white arillus and fixed to red valvæ,—and the seeds of a fine small tree related to Acacia or Inga, which also for some time remain attached to the valvæ, are black and white and visible at a great distance.—
Fritz Müller to Charles Darwin, 2 Aug 1866.
Darwin immediately responded:
I have been much interested by what you say on seeds which adhere to the valves being rendered conspicuous: you will see in the new Edit. of the origin why I have alluded to the beauty & bright colours of fruit; after writing this, it troubled me that I remembered to have seen brilliantly coloured seed, & your view occurred to me. There is a species of Peony in which the inside of the pod is crimson & the seeds dark purple. I had asked a friend to send me some of these seeds, to see if they were covered with any thing which cd prove attractive to birds. I recd some seeds the day after receiving your letter; & I must own that the fleshy covering is so thin that I can hardly believe it wd lead birds to devour them; & so it was in an analogous case with Passiflora gracilis. How is this in the cases mentioned by you? The whole case seems to me rather a striking one.
Darwin, C. R. to Müller, J. F. T., 25 Sept [1866]
This letter must have crossed in the post with a follow-up one from Müller (see the letter), who had found more examples of the phenomenon including 'a tree, probably belonging to the Mimoseae, which after the opening of the seed-capsules presents a truly magnificent aspect, being covered over and over with large and elegant curls of pale yellowish silk, (the spirally contracted valves) beset with brilliant red pearls. By the time he received Darwin's letter he had found yet more examples and speculated, 'With Mimosa and Rhynchosia there is no fleshy hull but the seeds are exceptionally hard and since gallinaceous birds often swallow small stones in order to promote the breaking up of their food, I imagined that these hard and conspicuous seeds could well serve the same purpose when swallowed by our Jacús (Penelope) or other birds.' (see the letter) By this time Darwin had already sent some of the seeds Müller had enclosed with his October letter to his best friend, the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, for identification (see the letter).
The selection of seeds in the adjacent photograph will give you some idea of the difficulties.
Darwin picked up on Müller's suggestion and tried the experiment himself, but the results were disappointing. He wrote to Hooker:
I enclose 3 seeds of the Mimoseous tree, of which the pods open & wind spirally outwards & display a lining like yellow silk, studded with these crimson seeds, & looking gorgeous. I gave two seeds to a confounded old cock, but his gizzard ground them up; at least I cd. not find them during 48o in his excrement. Please Mr. Deputy-Wriggler explain to me why these seeds & pods, hang long & look gorgeous, if Birds only grind up the seeds, for I do not suppose they can be covered with any pulp.— Can they be disseminated like acorns merely by birds accidentally dropping them. The case is a sore puzzle to me.—
Darwin, C. R. to Hooker, J. D., 10 Dec [1866]
Hooker replied with his own speculations:
The Scarlet seed is that of Adenanthera pavonina a native of India. I am well acquainted with itself … I should suppose that it is to imitate a scarlet insect & thus attract insectivorous birds, or frugiferous perchers, of weak digestions, that the color is acquired. The plant is a very common Indian one, & it would be easy to ascertain how far it is a prey to birds.
Hooker, J. D. to Darwin, C. R., 14 Dec 1866
Darwin was skeptical about the 'weak gizzard' explanation and although he told Hooker 'it is not worth enquiring in India about, though it is a perplexing case, for I can hardly admit your wriggle of the seeds being devoured by birds with weak gizzards:' he did mention the case to a correspondent in India, John Scott, who duly experimented and replied in September 1867 that his sulphur-crested cockatoo (the cockatoo Cacatua sulphurea is native to Sulawesi and many of the surrounding islands, where Adenanthera pavonina is also found) could 'with little difficulty split their hard testa, and eat with seeming gusto the embryonic parts only rejecting the coloured covering.' It was not surprising that a seed predator would be attracted but where was the benefit to the plant? Scott noted that his cockatoo dropped about half the seeds he tried to eat, possibly confirming Darwin's suggestion of accidental dissemination. But at this point the investigation was finally dropped – and we suppose remained a 'sore puzzle' to Darwin.
So what now?
Luckily for us, modern researchers have taken up the puzzle and have been able to resolve some of the questions Darwin posed. Brazilian ecologist, and former Cambridge PhD student, Mauro Galetti of the Conservation Biology Laboratory at Universidade Estadual Paulista in Rio Claro, Brazil, can bring us up to date on modern research into 'mimetic fruit', as these seeds are now known.
Some plant species have evolved fruits with no nutritive rewards – they enjoy the benefit of dispersal without the cost of pulp production. But how do they get away with it? 'One strategy is to hide small fruits and seeds among leaves that are ingested by large herbivores …. Another strategy is to display colourful seeds resembling fleshy ornithochoric (i.e. bird-dispersed) fruits, so-called "mimetic fruits".' (Galetti 2002, p. 177.)
Like Darwin, Galetti tested seeds on captive birds, and even used guans (the bird species suggested by Fritz Müller) and toucans, but was also able to observe the behaviour of birds and some mammals in the field. Seeds of Ormosia arborea were fed to both granivorous birds with muscular gizzards like guans and frugivorous birds with non-muscular gizzards like toucans. Naïve toucans (captive born) eat more Ormosia than wild captured toucans, a behaviour that might explain how these seeds get dispersed. Afterwards the defecated or regurgitated seeds were planted to observe germination. The surprise was that defacated seeds had much lower rates of germination than those in the control group and so the hypothesis that the seeds might be used as grit by galliform birds was rejected. Another possibility considered was that the seeds were aposematic (colour serves as a warning to seed predators of poison). Although this was provisionally rejected because agoutis (a kind of large rodent) prey on seeds, further study is being done. The hypothesis which best fitted the group's observations was that these seeds are parasitic, that is they deceive naïve birds by mimicking similar-looking fleshy fruits. Galetti listed dozen of species (many of them cited by Darwin and Müller), as mimetic fruits are found in several plant families and this dispersal strategy has evolved independently several times.
Pijl, Leendert van der (1903–90). Dutch botanist. Wrote Principles of dispersal in higher plants (1969; 2nd ed. 1972, 3rd ed. 1982).
- Cazetta, E., Schaefer, H, M., Galetti, M. 2008. Does attraction to frugivores or defense against pathogens shape fruit pulp composition? Oecologia 155: 277–86
- Galetti, M. 2002. Seed dispersal of mimetic seeds: parasitism, mutualism, aposematism or exaptation? In Seed dispersal and frugivory: ecology, evolution and conservation, edited by D. Levey, et al. New York: CABI Publishing.
- Guimaraes Jr., P. R., Galetti, M., Jordano, P. 2008 Seed Dispersal Anachronisms: Rethinking the Fruits Extinct Megafauna Ate, PLoS ONE 3(3): e1745. (Alternative link)


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"When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love¦" - Professor Slughorn1
I want to look at Snape to try and answer this question: Did Snape feel an attraction for Lily and what light might this shed on Snape's ultimate loyalties? Severus and Lily could have formed a friendship, or perhaps even more. If he did love Lily, he would desire revenge against James for taking her from him, and would stop at nothing to remove all human obstacles that stood between them, including the infant Harry. Before he passed the critical information of the prophecy to Lord Voldemort, Snape could have turned the situation to his own advantage, using it as an opportunity to remove James and have Lily. As we will see, Voldemort's murder of Lily could quite possibly have guaranteed Snape's ultimate choice of the Order over the Death Eaters.
Did Snape feel an attraction for Lily?
We know from Slughorn that both Lily and Snape excelled at potions, so, mudblood or not, Severus would undoubtedly hold much respect for her abilities and have something in common with her. As well as her potion's ability, Lily was a beautiful girl. Even Severus Snape would notice her beauty. We also know from Sirius that James and Lily only started dating in their seventh year. That leaves a two-year window between Snape's worst memory witnessed by Harry in the Pensieve, and James and Lily getting together. During this time Severus and Lily could have formed a friendship, or perhaps even more. Furthermore, JKR has already stated that James was not Lily's only admirer: "She was a popular girl." 2 Also, I believe I'm not the only one who thinks ˜that awful boy' Petunia overheard telling Lily about the Dementors could be Severus Snape.3
Much is made of Lily's eyes, and Harry having Lily's eyes is significant to the Snape/Lily connection. As we have seen, Snape usually manages to control his temper with Sirius, one of his former tormentors, but he completely loses his cool when Harry calls him a coward, as Harry has made him do on many previous occasions: "his face was suddenly demented, inhuman, as though he was in as much pain as the yelping howling dog¦" 4 I think Harry's eyes remind him of some past exchange with Lily: possibly a break up from a dating relationship or their friendship failed. Whichever was the case, Snape didn't need to actually be with her to fall in love with her. I would guess that Lily (and Harry's eyes are a living reminder of her) might have made Snape lose control of his emotions.
Snape's defining characteristics
Now Snape, as we know, does not go through life with his eyes closed. On the evidence of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, he is one of the most talented wizards and easily the most ice-cold and calculating character in the septology. For years has led a double life standing on the edge of a knife between the two most powerful wizards in the world. We know that he is closer and more vital to the Dark Lord than any other, his "favourite, his most trusted advisor." 5 Snape has two defining characteristics which make him the perfect double agent and enormously useful to both sides. The first is inscrutability as symbolized by his mastery of Occlumency.' So many times his reactions and feelings are unreadable and his thoughts unknowable. For example, "He looked slightly paler than usual, and his cold, black eyes glittered strangely" 6 or the famous twitch as he makes the unbreakable vow with Narcissa.
The second characteristic is sang-froid ' cold blood. Snape, at all times, keeps a tight control over his emotions and plays situations expertly. His calm, needling provocation of Sirius into a state of rage in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place (while he himself remains calm) exemplifies this: "They were squaring up to each other, Sirius looking livid, Snape calculating, his eyes darting from Sirius's wand tip to his face." 7
We know that Snape is always thinking, always calculating, and as such is very likely to have thought through who might be the potential victims of Voldemort before he passed the critical information of the prophecy to him, and also how he could turn the situation to his own advantage, which seems always to be his primary motivation. Snape is loyal only to himself. Engineering a situation to his personal advantage is in keeping with his character.
I think it is likely that if Snape did love Lily, he would not only greatly desire revenge against James for taking her from him, but would also stop at nothing to remove all human obstacles that stood between them, including the infant Harry. Snape's love for Lily fed his hatred for James, and meant he would stop at nothing ' even arranging the murder of her child ' to possess Lily. Lily's life would be spared in return for Snape giving information of the prophesy to Lord Voldemort.
The Prophecy Connection
Snape first overheard the prophecy when under orders from Voldemort to infiltrate Dumbledore's inner circle, as he tells Bellatrix: ". . . you know, I presume, that it was on the Dark Lord's orders that I took up the post?" 8 It is possible that Snape knew what the prophecy meant and whom it would affect, and that he formed a plan to turn it to his own advantage. Snape used the prophecy information ˜unexpectedly' pointing Voldemort to the Potters.
Snape acting as a double agent for Dumbledore could be a reason the Potters were forewarned that they were marked for death (unless Dumbledore had a second mole within the Death Eaters, which I think unlikely). Snape - even then right in Voldemort's inner circle - must have known that Wormtail was a fellow Death Eater and a traitor to the Order. He therefore knew that Wormtail would use his ˜friendship' with James to lead Voldemort to the Potters' hiding place, if given the opportunity. As we know, this happened when Sirius, unfortunately, made Wormtail their secret keeper as a double bluff.
The upshot of this is that due to his knowledge of Wormtail's treachery, Snape knew that James and Harry Potter would be attacked and almost certainly killed, whether they had prior warning of Voldemort's intentions or not. But by providing his apparently life saving warning, he managed to induct himself straight into the Order. Snape therefore used the prophecy information to please both Voldemort and Dumbledore. However, Snape was ultimately hoping to achieve his own endgame of killing James and Harry, thus achieving revenge against James, but most importantly, leaving the way clear to rekindle his relationship with Lily. Snape's obsessive love for Lily fed his equally obsessive hatred for James, and meant he would stop at nothing ' even arranging the murder of her child ' to possess Lily.
Voldemort tried to spare Lily, and may have agreed with Snape, before the attack took place, to let her live. Rowling has confirmed that Voldemort would have let Lily live.9 Lily's James/Harry free life was to be Snape's reward for good service, and Lord Voldemort always rewards his loyal followers, doesn't he?
Dumbledore's Trust
We know Dumbledore was aware of the enmity between James and Snape, as he tells Harry "they did rather detest each other. Not unlike yourself and Mr. Malfoy." 10 Dumbledore would know that James's death would not cause Snape too many sleepless nights, and apparent remorse over marking James for death would be a big leap of faith to induct a Death Eater straight into the Order. Snape must have offered Dumbledore some other, more realistic proof of his remorse, and that could have been real feelings ' love - for Lily.
I think that Snape may have been present at Godric's Hollow on the night of the attack, waiting for the smoke to clear, and the chance to move in and comfort Lily. When his plan backfired and Lily died, Snape's grief in the aftermath of her death would have been deep. And this deep true grief would be proof for Dumbledore that he wanted out of the Death Eaters. Dumbledore's trust would only have solidified when he witnessed Snape's emotional state. As Dumbledore tells Harry "You have no idea of the remorse Professor Snape felt when he realized how Lord Voldemort had interpreted the prophecy." 11
And Finally
Regardless of Snape's involvement in the murder plot and continuing status as a Death Eater, Voldemort's murder of Lily was the one thing I doubt Snape could forgive. It is quite possible that by doing so Lord Voldemort has guaranteed Snape's ultimate choice will be the Order over the Death Eaters, not out of loyalty to Dumbledore, but again because of Snape's own motivation: his desire for revenge against the Dark Lord. Rather than loyalty to the Order, I think that this desire for revenge against Voldemort for the death of Lily is the "iron clad reason for trusting Snape." 12 That meant Dumbledore felt secure enough to place total faith in him.
Snape's choice will be the key to the series because he has made himself the key member of both the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix, indispensable to both sides to the point where the fate of the war may rest on his ultimate choice. Voldemort's life began with the obsessive love of Merope Gaunt for Tom Riddle senior; it would be fitting if the obsessive love of Snape for Lily were a major factor in finally ending it. It is an uncomfortable thought, however, that the fate of the wizarding world may hang on the choices of a hugely talented but virtually amoral and completely self-centred man, in many ways, if my theory of his use of the prophecy is correct, he is the ultimate Slytherin; he truly embodies the sorting hat's observation that those cunning folk use any means/to achieve their ends.13
1. Rowling, Half-Blood Prince, 177.
2. Anelli and Spartz, "TLC/MN interview Part Three."
3. Rowling, Order of the Phoenix, 34.
4. Ibid., Half-Blood Prince, 564.
5. Ibid., 38.
6. Ibid., Goblet of Fire, 619.
7. Ibid., Order of the Phoenix, 459.
8. Ibid., Half-Blood Prince, 32
9. Anelli and Spartz, "TLC/MN interview Part One.".
10. Rowling, Philosopher's Stone, 217.
11. Ibid., Half Blood Prince, 513.
12. Ibid., 574.
13. Ibid., Philosopher's Stone, 88.
Anelli, Melissa and Emerson Spartz. "The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part One' The Leaky Cauldron, 16 July 2005 /features/interviews/jkr1.
""" "The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet interview Joanne Kathleen Rowling: Part Three' The Leaky Cauldron, 16 July 2005 /features/interviews/jkr3.
Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. London: Bloomsbury, 1998.
""". Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000.
""". Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. London: Bloomsbury, 2005.
""". Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. London: Bloomsbury, 2003.
""". Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. London: Bloomsbury, 1997.
""". Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. London: Bloomsbury, 1999.


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The Apple iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) ($3,099 direct) desktop is a powerhouse system for those who need high-octane performance. It can be upgraded to 32GB of memory and a high-end third-generation Intel Core i7 processor. When combined with speedy Flash storage, it is the kind of configuration that will excite your graphic design and scientific users, at least until the next iteration of the iMac shows up later this year (probably).
Design and Features
On the outside, the latest iMac 27-inch is identical to the Apple iMac 27-Inch (Late 2012) ($2,688 direct) that we looked at last year. It has the same 20.3-inch-tall aluminum chassis with built-in tilting stand. Again, you'll have to budget about 25 inches of width and 8 inches of depth on your work surface for this behemoth. The current high-end all-in-one desktop Editors' Choice the Dell XPS 27 Touch All-in-One (2720) takes up roughly the same amount of space, within two inches in any given dimension. The iMac is thinner than the Dell XPS 27, particularly at the edges, where the chassis tapers down to a few millimeters. As such, there is no room for an internal optical drive, though Apple still carries its external USB SuperDrive DVD burner for $79.
Both the Dell XPS 27 Touch and the iMac 27-inch have better than 1080p HD IPS screens, with a 2,560-by-1,440 resolution. This means you can view and edit a full HD 1080p movie with plenty of room left over for toolbars and the like. Other 27-inch all-in-one desktops like the Vizio 27-inch All-in-One Touch PC (CA27T-B1) ($1,549) and Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon ($1,849) make do with only 1,920-by-1,080 resolution screens, which are to their credit, still full 1080p HD. The iMac 27-inch models don't have touch screens. The OS X operating system isn't optimized for touch screens, and for the time being Apple has limited touch to iOS devices like the iPad and iPhone. Like all current 27-inch iMacs, the system has a laminated glass cover for the screen, which reduces reflections.
The iMac 27-inch has four USB 3.0 ports, two Thunderbolt ports, a SDXC card reader, headset jack, and Gigabit Ethernet on the back. There is an access panel on the back for access to the memory slots, but the system we reviewed came with them filled to the current maximum of 32GB. Any other expansion has to be done via Thunderbolt or USB 3.0. For the fastest throughput rates, we'd recommend one or more Thunderbolt SSD drives or arrays, but you can hook up everything from a 128MB USB 2.0 stick up to multiple Thunderbolt five-drive disk arrays for extra data storage.
Similar Products
The configured-to-order (CTO) system we reviewed came with 256GB of Flash Storage, which is totally enough for a single-use desktop like an audio engineer's workstation (with Apple Logic Pro X), as long as you have external storage for your music data files. For general-purpose use like a graphics artist's workstation, we'd recommend the Fusion Drive setup seen in last year's review, since that configuration has 1TB of internal storage for personal files like music and downloads. The iMac 27-inch comes with 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi networking in addition to the physical gigabit Ethernet port. You can use the Thunderbolt ports to connect up to seven devices each (including up to two Thunderbolt or mini-DisplayPort monitors). You'll need a third-party adapter for mini-DisplayPort to HDMI or one of Apple's mini-DisplayPort to VGA or DVI adapters to use the iMac with other screens. You can use the iMac's display with most recent Thunderbolt-equipped Macs (Mac mini, MacBook Air, etc.), so you stretch the life of the system's display once the internal components are obsolete. That said, Thunderbolt isn't as accommodating as a plain HDMI-in port like the one on the Dell XPS 27 Touch, which can connect to more devices like laptops, smartphones, game consoles, cable boxes, and anything else with a HDMI-out port.
Like all current Macs, the iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) comes with OS X 10.8 and Apple's iLife suite (iTunes, iPhoto, etc.). You'll be able to upgrade the iMac to OS X Mavericks (aka OS X 10.9) when it is released later this year, though the pricing and availability on the upgrade hasn't been released yet. The iMac comes with a standard one-year warranty.
The iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) we reviewed has 32GB of DDR3 1,600-MHz memory, a third-generation Intel Core i7-3770 processor, 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 675MX discrete graphics, and 256GB of Flash Storage instead of a hard drive. As a result, this system screams through some of our benchmark tests. It's in a dead heat with the 4th-generation Intel Core-equipped Dell XPS 27 Touch (2720) on the Handbrake video encoder test and the Photoshop CS6 test. Both are over a minute faster than the mobile processor-based Lenovo IdeaCentre Horizon.
The iMac also turns in quite playable scores on the Heaven 3D gaming benchmark test. The iMac turned in a barely playable 31 fps at native resolution, but when stepped down to a more reasonable 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, the iMac returned a playable 55 fps. This tells us that this iMac is capable of playing strenuous AAA game titles fairly easily. You should be able to find a sweet spot that trades between resolution and rendering quality. It certainly blows away the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 in the Vizio 27-inch All-in-One Touch PC (CA27T-B1). With more memory and Flash Storage, this iMac is a bit faster than the system we reviewed last year, particularly on Photoshop CS6 and CineBench, which renders 3D using the CPU and system memory instead of the graphics card.
The Apple iMac 27-inch (Nvidia GeForce GTX 675M) certainly makes a case for itself, you'll certainly get better performance when you max out the memory and use Flash Storage. If you're a Mac maven who already has external Thunderbolt storage, this is a good intermediary upgrade until the Mac Pro ships later in 2013. However, on a price and feature comparison, the Dell XPS 27 One (2720) holds on to its Editors' Choice for high-end all-in-one desktops. It matches the iMac on screen resolution and multimedia performance, trumps the iMac on port selection (which is the primary expansion method for all in ones), lags on 3D gaming performance, but more than makes up for it on storage capacity and in the final price tally. Essentially, if you're in the market for a high end Mac, this is the powerhouse system, but if you just need a high-end all-in-one desktop PC, the XPS 27 One (2720) wins the bang-for-the-buck challenge.
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Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Utah investigators handling the case of missing mother Susan Powell examined her father-in-law's cell phone, calendar and emails earlier this year _ more than two years after she disappeared.
Records obtained by The Associated Press under Washington state public records laws indicate that authorities made little effort to explore Steve Powell's activities after Susan Powell disappeared in December 2009, even though her family has long suggested that he might know something about where she is. They only began the more intensive effort in April of this year after a former co-worker of Steven Powell's said he had talked about traveling to Utah in the weeks close to when she went missing.
Investigators had largely focused their time on Susan Powell's husband, Josh, who killed himself and the couple's two young children earlier this year. Utah investigators said they can't discuss details of the case, but Washington state officials have said they believe Josh Powell killed his wife. They also say his father may know more about the disappearance than he's letting on.
Anne Bremner, an attorney for Susan Powell's parents, said they had expressed those concerns from the beginning about Steve Powell.
The family's concerns were exacerbated by how Steve Powell had acted around Susan Powell. And they escalated to a new level in the summer of 2011, when a search warrant at the home where Steve and Josh Powell lived found journals and photos suggesting that Steve Powell had an extremely sexual and emotional draw to his daughter-in-law.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that some 4,500 images in a folder dedicated to Susan Powell included shots of her out in public, apparently unaware that a camera was focused on her. Steve Powell wrote in journals that he took sexual pleasure in looking at videos and images he captured of her.
"Oh my god, those journals. I couldn't read them all," Bremner said. "The fact that Steven had that amazingly bizarre obsession with Susan _ chronicled page after page _ that alone would make him somebody you'd want to look that."
Sgt. Mike Powell, a spokesman for the police department in West Valley City, Utah, said he can't discuss details of the investigation but noted that the agency has spent countless hours on the case. The investigation remains active, though Powell said investigators have reduced their focus on the case.
Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist, who oversaw the voyeurism case against Steve Powell in Washington state, said Powell likely knows more than he's telling but that he's not a reliable person even if he did speak. Powell is in prison serving his voyeurism sentence and could be released as early as May.
"Barring new evidence emerging, we're done with Mr. Powell," Lindquist said.
Utah investigators say that Steve Powell has not cooperated with the Susan Powell investigation, but that still didn't initially trigger a more thorough assessment of him. In fact, an investigator said in one email obtained by AP that they did not take Steve Powell's cell phone or mobile internet card during the 2011 search at his home.
In early April 2012, a co-worker of Steve Powell's went public with her recollection that he talked about going on a snowy camping trip with his son and grandchildren in Utah around the time Susan Powell disappeared. She had previously emailed authorities about that conversation.
The day after Jennifer Silva told her story to AP, detectives in Utah began checking with officials at the Washington state Department of Corrections, where Powell had worked around the time Susan Powell disappeared. They began asking where Steve Powell was assigned and what clients he was working with in December 2009.
Susan Powell was last seen on Sunday, December 6 of 2009. Steve Powell's work calendar is blank the following day, and he took sick leave the two days after.
Investigators also expanded their assessment of Steve Powell in April 2012, analyzing his phone and SIM card. Investigators also explicitly asked for his emails from 2009.
The AP first requested those emails, which are public record, in 2011.
Associated Press writer Mike Baker can be reached on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/HiPpEV
(Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


text: ENVER MASUD: PANTAGON TRANSCRIPTS, OFFICIAL RECORDS BELIE 'THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT' By SHOAHJanuary 4, 2011USA NOVANEWS January 2, 2011 by Enver Masud Hard evidence exists that American Airlines Flight 77 did not strike the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 — the laws of science refute the official account of 9/11 by Enver Masud http://www.twf.org/bio/EMasud.html On December 17, 2010, truTV's Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura — former Governor of Minnesota, examined the "idea that a missile or explosives — not a hijacked jetliner — damaged the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. I agree, and first wrote about it a few years ago. I live less than a mile from the Pentagon, and began examining this issue in early 2002. The first question I asked when I looked at the Pentagon shortly after that tragic day in 2001 was, "where's the plane?" I began to suspect the official account of 9/11 when I learned that the U.S. war on Afghanistan was apparently planned prior to September 11, and possibly after U.S. negotiations with the Taliban for a pipeline broke down. According to the BBC (September 18, 2001), Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. In April 2002 I wrote an article voicing doubts about the official account of 9/11, and on March 7, 2005 rebutted the official account of 9/11 in an article "What Really Happened on September 11 at the Pentagon" — among the most visited at The Wisdom Fund website (TWF.org). Most of what Jesse Ventura revealed on December 17, 2010, and more, is described in my March 7, 2005 article, and expanded upon in my September 11, 2010 article "Pentagon Transcripts, Official Records Belie 'The 9/11 Commission Report'" (original with exhibits, sources). On September 12, 2001, news media had to have known that something was amiss when at the Dept. of Defense News Briefing "American Airlines", "Flight 77″, "Boeing 757″, were not even mentioned, and reporters were being "threatened or, in fact, handcuffed and dragged away". Eventually, when the security camera video of "Flight 77″ was released by the Pentagon it included only one frame showing something — labeled "Approaching Aircraft" — moving parallel to the ground about 100 yards in front of the Pentagon. This is the U.S. government's evidence to support its claim that American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and establishment news media have shown little interest in further investigation. Indeed, the government's own records — Pentagon transcripts, official reports, flight data recorder, and the laws of science belie "The 9/11 Commission Report". September 11, 2001: CNN News Report Just minutes after the alleged attack, standing in front of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamie McIntyre, CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent since November 1992, reported: "From my close up inspection there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. . . . . The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage — nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon." McIntyre continued, "If you look at the pictures of the Pentagon you see that all of the floors have collapsed, that didn't happen immediately. It wasn't till almost 45 minutes later that the structure was weakened enough that all of the floors collapsed." This news report apparently was not rebroadcast, and a few years later McIntyre claimed on CNN (Wolf Blitzer's show) that he had been taken out of context. Lt Col Karen Kwiatowski, who from her fifth-floor, B-ring office at the Pentagon, witnessed "an unforgettable fireball, 20 to 30 feet in diameter" confirms McIntyre's account. Writing in "9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out," Kwiatowski noted, "a strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure one would expect from the impact of a large airliner. This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the secretary of defense, who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a 'missile'." Pentagon employee April Gallop, whose "desk was roughly 40 feet from the point where the plane allegedly hit the outside wall" stated in a sworn complaint (before the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York): "As she sat down to work there was an explosion, then another; walls collapsed and the ceiling fell in. Hit in the head, she was able to grab the baby and make her way towards the daylight showing through a blasted opening in the outside wall. There was no airplane wreckage and no burning airplane fuel anywhere; only rubble and dust." Barbara Honegger, military affairs journalist, reported in her personal capacity that a pilot sent by Gen Larry Arnold (NORAD) "reported back that there was no evidence that a plane had hit the building." She added, "Multiple standard-issue, battery-operated wall clocks . . . stopped between 9:31 and 9:32-1/2 on September 11." Flight 77 is alleged to have struck the Pentagon at 9:38. A diagram (derived from the "Pentagon Building Performance Report", Figure 7.9) indicates a "Slab deflected upward" which is consistent with either an explosion below the slab, or an upward blow by a hard object. Major General Albert Stubblebine, U.S. Army (ret) — former Commanding General of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, and head of Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence — stated in a video interview, "I don't know exactly what hit it, but I do know, from the photographs that I have analyzed and looked at very, very carefully, it was not an airplane." Major Douglas Rokke, U.S. Army (ret) adds: "No aircraft hit the Pentagon. Totally impossible! You couldn't make the turns with a 757. You couldn't fly it in over the highway. You couldn't fly it over the light poles. You couldn't even get it that close to the ground because of turbulence." September 12, 2001: Pentagon News Briefing At the September 12, 2001, Dept. of Defense (DoD) News Briefing by Assistant Secretary of Defense, Victoria Clarke, Ed Plaugher (fire chief of Arlington County), and others, "American Airlines", "Flight 77″, "Boeing 757″ were not even mentioned. How significant is this? With the world's news media assembled at the Pentagon on the day after the alleged attack on the Pentagon by Arab hijackers flying American Airlines Flight 77 — a Boeing 757 — "American Airlines", "Flight 77″, "Boeing 757″ were not considered important enough to mention at the Pentagon News Briefing the day after the alleged attack! Fire chief Ed Plaugher was asked by a reporter, "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?" Plaugher responded, "there are some small pieces of aircraft … there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing." When asked, "Chief, there are small pieces of the plane virtually all over, out over the highway, tiny pieces. Would you say the plane exploded, virtually exploded on impact due to the fuel", Plaugher reponded "You know, I'd rather not comment on that." The transcript reveals that reporters were being "threatened or, in fact, handcuffed and dragged away". This year, the transcript of the September 12, 2001 News Briefing was removed from the DoD website. September 15, 2001: Pentagon News Briefing At the September 15, 2001, Dept. of Defense (DoD) News Briefing by Mr. Lee Evey, Pentagon Renovation Manager, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, and others, it was apparent that there were lingering doubts about what had struck the Pentagon on September 11. When Mr. Evey said, "the nose of the aircraft broke through this innermost wall of C Ring", a reporter asked, "One thing that's confusing — if it came in the way you described, at an angle, why then are not the wings outside? I mean, the wings would have shorn off. The tail would have shorn off. And yet there's apparently no evidence of the aircraft outside the E Ring." Evey replied, "Actually, there's considerable evidence of the aircraft outside the E Ring. It's just not very visible." Apparently, no one asked how "the nose of the aircraft" (a relatively weak component of the aircraft) remained sufficiently intact to penetrate the C Ring — the E Ring is the outermost ring. 'Pentagon Building Performance Report' In January 2003, the U.S. government's National Institute of Standards and Technology released the "Pentagon Building Performance Report". Page 35 of this report reads: "An examination of the area encompassed by extending the line of travel of the aircraft to the face of the building shows that there are no discrete marks on the building corresponding to the positions of the outer third of the right wing. The size and position of the actual opening in the facade of the building (from column line 8 to column line 18) indicate that no portion of the outer two-thirds of the right wing and no portion of the outer one-third of the left wing actually entered the building." Had a Boeing 757 struck the Pentagon, its wings would probably have been found outside the Pentagon. But these wings were not found outside the Pentagon! Photographs, and CNN's Jamie McIntyre confirm this fact. Page 36 of this report reads: "The height of the damage to the facade of the building was much less than the height of the aircraft's tail. At approximately 45 ft, the tail height was nearly as tall as the first four floors of the building. Obvious visible damage extended only over the lowest two floors, to approximately 25 ft above grade. This implies that whatever struck the Pentagon, couldn't have been a Boeing 757. Page 39 of this report reads: "Most likely, the wings of the aircraft were severed as the aircraft penetrated the facade of the building. Even if portions of the wings remained intact after passing through the plane of the facade, the structural damage pattern indicates that the wings were severed before the aircraft penetrated more than a few dozen feet into the building." As previously noted, these wings were not found outside the Pentagon! From the preceding it is clear that the "Pentagon Building Performance Report" — prepared by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineering Institute, and released by the U.S. government's National Institute of Standards and Technology — contradicts the official account of 9/11. 'Arlington County After-Action Report' The "Arlington County After-Action Report" describes the occurrence of an event at the Pentagon minutes before the alleged strike of Flight 77, and the presence of Fort Myer Unit 161 at the Pentagon prior to impact. Annex A, Page A-4 of this report states: "Captain Dennis Gilroy and his team were already on station at the Pentagon when Flight #77 slammed into it, just beyond the heliport. Foam 161 caught fire and suffered a flat tire from flying debris. Firefighters Mark Skipper and Alan Wallace were outside the vehicle at impact and received burns and lacerations. . . . Captain Gilroy called the Fort Myer Fire Department, reporting for the first time the actual location of the crash." Did Fort Myer Unit 161 go the Pentagon following an explosion — prior to the alleged strike of Flight 77? It is consistent with the reporter's question at the September 12 News Briefing, "Chief, there are small pieces of the plane virtually all over, out over the highway, tiny pieces. Would you say the plane exploded, virtually exploded on impact due to the fuel"? It is consistent with April Gallop's sworn complaint that "she was able to grab the baby and make her way towards the daylight showing through a blasted opening in the outside wall. There was no airplane wreckage and no burning airplane fuel anywhere; only rubble and dust." It is consistent with military affairs journalist Barbara Honegger's account of "Multiple standard-issue, battery-operated wall clocks . . . stopped between 9:31 and 9:32-1/2 on September 11." Fort Myer Unit 161′s arrival at the Pentagon to put out a fire prior to the strike by "Flight 77″ is not consistent with the official account of 9/11. 'American Airlines' Flight Data Recorder Pilots for 9/11 Truth state: "video captured by the parking gate cam is in direct conflict with the Aircraft Flight Data Recorder data released by the NTSB" (National Transportation Safety Board) pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request. The "Pentagon Building Performance Report" states (page 14): "A Pentagon security camera located near the northwest corner of the building recorded the aircraft as it approached the building. Five photographs (figures 3.3 through 3.7), taken approximately one second apart, show the approaching aircraft and the ensuing fireball associated with the initial impact." On page 35 of this report we're told, "The site data indicate that the aircraft fuselage impacted the building at column line 14 at an angle of approximately 42 degrees to the normal to the face of the building, at or slightly below the second-story slab." However, the NTSB animation (January 2002), according to Pilots for 9/11 Truth, shows an aircraft flying north of the Navy Annex, not leveling off, and being too high to have hit the Pentagon. When confronted with this discrepancy, NTSB Chief Jim Potter said: "I have no comment on the existence of the discrepancies." Eyewitnesses state categorically that a plane (which they believed was Flight 77) flew north of the Citgo gas station (now the Navy Exchange) located west of the Pentagon on South Joyce Street at Columbia Pike, rather than flying south of the gas station as stated in official reports. G-Force Would Have Destroyed the Boeing 757 Pilots for 9/11 Truth conclude: "Arlington's unique topography and obstacles along American 77 'final leg' to the Pentagon make this approach completely impossible". Flight 77 is alleged to have flown over Columbia Pike and the Virginia Department of Transportation communications tower located 1143 yards west of the Pentagon before striking the Pentagon at "530 miles per hour". The antenna on the VDOT tower has been determined to be 169 ft above the ground with a ground elevation of 135 feet (FCC Registration Number 1016111). The ground elevation of the Pentagon is 33 feet according to USGS. This path would have taken Flight 77 south of the gas station at the intersection of Columbia Pike and S. Joyce Street, and over the intersection of Columbia Pike and Virginia Route 27. Flight 77 would then have been over Pentagon grounds with about 500 feet remaining to level out and to strike the Pentagon "slightly below the second floor slab" at "an angle of approximately 42 degrees". The Columbia Pike and VA-27 intersection presents a roughly 20 feet tall barrier in the alleged path of Flight 77. According to the "Pentagon Building Performance Report" (page 14), "The first photograph (figure 3.3) captured an image of the aircraft when it was approximately 320 ft (approximately 0.42 second) from impact with the west wall of the Pentagon. Two photographs (figures 3.3 and 3.7), when compared, seem to show that the top of the fuselage of the aircraft was no more than approximately 20 ft above the ground when the first photograph of this series was taken." Leaving aside the discrepancies between the official account of Flight 77, and the Flight Data Recorder (which NTSB refuses to answer), Pilots for 9/11 Truth calculated the force on the Boeing 757 at 34 Gs, i.e. 34 times the force due to gravity, at the point that it would have to transition from its downward flight to level flight. With a virtual weight of about 8.5 million pounds, Flight 77 could not have leveled off before striking the Pentagon. It would have crashed at the intersection of Columbia Pike and VA-27. This alone is sufficient to refute the official account of "Flight 77″ — Flight 77 cannot have violated the laws of science. Pilots for 9/11 Truth did another calculation by lowering the height of "Flight 77″ below that shown by the FDR. They lowered it to the top of the VDOT antenna. With this very conservative case, they calculated the force on the Boeing 757 at 11.2 Gs. "11.2 Gs was never recorded in the FDR. 11.2 Gs would rip the aircraft apart" they wrote. Impossible: Damage Path and Flight Path Aligned With Flight 77 alleged to have struck the Pentagon at "an angle of approximately 42 degrees", the flight path and the damage path cannot possibly form a straight line. Flying at "an angle of approximately 42 degrees" the Boeing 757′s starboard wing would have struck the west wall of the Pentagon before the port wing. This would cause the aircraft to veer to the right, and the damage path would be in line with the aircraft's new heading — not with the aircraft's heading prior to impact (assuming — miraculously — the plane was able to penetrate the C Ring). However, the "Pentagon Building Performance Report" Figures 6.2 and 6.6 show that the flight path and damage path (damage path also illustrated in the "Arlington County After Action Report", page 23) do form a straight line extending from the center-line of the fuselage of the aircraft to where the "the nose of the aircraft broke through this innermost wall of C Ring". The flight path and damage path depicted forming a straight line in Figures 6.2 and 6.6 violate the laws of science. This alone is sufficient to refute the official account of "Flight 77″ — Flight 77 cannot have violated the laws of science. Therefore, what looks like a puff of smoke — labeled "Approaching Aircraft" in the security camera video, cannot possibly be a Boeing 757. Conclusion To conclude, the official account of Flight 77 — supported only by one frame from a security camera showing a puff of something approaching the Pentagon — is contradicted by the transcripts of Pentagon News Briefings conducted on September 12 and 15; by the "Pentagon Building Performance Report"; by the "Arlington County After-Action Report"; by the FBI's exhibit on phone calls from Flight 77; and by the Flight Data Recorder provided by the NTSB. The official account of Flight 77 contradicts the laws of science. Flight 77 could not have withstood the calculated G-force when it would have had to level out — about 100 yards before striking the Pentagon — with "the top of the fuselage of the aircraft . . . no more than approximately 20 ft above the ground". The flight path of a Boeing 757 traveling at "530 miles per hour", striking the Pentagon at "an angle of approximately 42 degrees", and the resulting damage path inside the Pentagon cannot possibly form a straight line as depicted in the Pentagon Building Performance Report. On September 10, 2001, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the Pentagon "cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions". It is alleged that the section of the Pentagon destroyed on September 11, 2001 housed records of DoD spending, and the personnel for monitoring that spending. Enver Masud, an engineer, served as Acting Chief of the Strategic and Emergency Planning Branch at the U.S. Department of Energy, set up and directed the Operations Review Division at the Iowa Commerce Commission, and has consulted for the U.S. Agency for International Development and the World Bank in Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia. His book "9/11 Unveiled" is a free download at The Wisdom Fund — http://www.twf.org


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The Fairy Tale Behind Structured Products
One of the most well-known and most beloved forms of literature is the fairy tale. Although not every fairy tale is actually about fairies, they do tend to be fictitious and highly fanciful tales of fabled deeds and creatures. They are frequently derived from oral folklore based on myths and legends. And fairy tales are usually intended for children.
One of the most popular fairy tales is the Grimm Brothers' Snow White. In the story, to eliminate her competition for "fairest in the land," the evil Queen Maleficent disguises herself as an old woman and offers Snow White a beautiful, shiny red apple. Despite a stern warning from the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White cannot resist the temptation of the apple. She takes the bite that sends her into a deep sleep.
Adult Fairy Tales
Wall Street's product machine is continuously pumping out fairy tales. Indeed, its product innovations can also often be called "fanciful tales of fabled deeds." The only difference is that they are designed for adults. Like the poisoned apple, they have shiny features designed to entice naive investors.
Despite the wide variety of "fanciful tales" available, nearly all of them have one thing in common: Although they look appealing to investors, they have attributes that make them much more attractive in reality to the seller than to the buyer. Typically, these products fall into the category of what are referred to as "structured products."
Structured products are packages of synthetic investment instruments specifically designed to appeal to certain needs that investors perceive aren't being met by other available securities. They are often packaged as asset allocation tools that can be used to reduce portfolio risk.
Structured products usually consist of a note and a derivative, meaning the product derives its economic value by reference to the price of another asset, typically a bond, equity, currency or commodity. That derivative is often an option (a put or a call). The structured note pays the interest at a set rate and schedule, and the derivative establishes payment at maturity.
Because of the derivative component, structured products are often marketed to investors as debt securities. Depending on the variety of structured product, full protection of the principal invested is sometimes offered. In other cases, only limited protection may be offered, or even no protection at all.
Over the past decade, structured investment products, also known as equity- or index-linked notes, have become increasingly common in the portfolios of retail investors. The 2016 Greenwich Associates survey of structured products reported nearly $60 billion worth are now being sold each year, and that suppliers are forecasting strong growth in the future. Among the biggest suppliers of structured products are HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas.
And this is not just a U.S. phenomenon. In some countries (such as Switzerland and Germany), approximately 6% of all financial assets are now held in structured products. Unfortunately, they remain "popular" for the same reasons many financial products are popular: either they carry large commissions for the sellers, or they so greatly favor the issuers that they are pushed on unsophisticated investors who cannot fathom the complexity (but are assured by the salespeople and advertising collateral that these are good and often safe products).
A Question Of Exploitation
Fortunately, there's a substantial amount of research on structured products. We know, for instance, that sophisticated issuers create them because they lower their costs of capital and generate profits. Thus, whenever an individual investor buys a complex instrument from Wall Street, you can be sure they are being exploited.
The reason is simple: If the issuer could raise capital more cheaply with a straightforward, simple debt instrument, they would do so. Thus, the question isn't whether or not an investor is being taken advantage of. The only question is: How badly is the investor being exploited?
Stefan Hunt, Neil Stewart and Redis Zaliauskas contribute to the literature on structured products through their March 2015 paper, "Two Plus Two Makes Five? Survey Evidence That Investors Overvalue Structured Deposits."
The paper was written for the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which is "committed to encouraging debate among academics, practitioners and policymakers in all aspects of financial regulation." Hunt and Zaliauskas are in the chief economist's department of the FCA, and Stewart is a professor at the University of Warwick's department of psychology.
The authors begin by noting: "Innovation in retail financial markets has led to increasing product complexity over the past two decades, but there is little evidence of a comparable increase in consumers' financial capability. Over the same period, there have been numerous instances of mis-selling that have led to regulatory action in the UK. When examining whether the market for a particular complex financial product is working well, one of the things regulators need to ask is whether consumers can understand and adequately assess the products they consider buying."
Later, Hunt, Stewart and Zaliauskas write: "The FCA has repeatedly fined structured product providers and voiced concerns about market practices, indicating that the market is not working well for investors. The fines imposed on a major provider of retail structured products, in 2011 and 2014, were related to failings in sales of structured capital at risk products and to misleading promotions of structured deposits."
In other words, the purpose of their paper was to investigate how well consumers understand and value structured deposits, whether there are systematic biases in investors' evaluation of the expected performance of the structured deposits, and whether providing targeted information improves this evaluation.
A Study Based On A Survey
Hunt, Stewart and Zaliauskas conducted a survey of 384 retail investors who had relatively well-diversified portfolios and who had previously bought or would consider buying structured deposits or other structured products. The authors showed the investors hypothetical examples of five popular types of structured products with returns linked to the performance of the FTSE 100 stock index.
To distinguish between expected returns driven by overall optimism about the market and difficulty in understanding how structured deposit returns derive from an underlying index, they asked investors about their views on the performance of the FTSE 100 index over the next five years.
The authors then compared investors' expectations about FTSE 100 returns with the returns they expected from different structured products. This allowed them to calculate bias in how investors evaluate the structured deposits relative to the index. They next asked investors to rank the structured deposits against a range of fixed-rate deposits, taking into account the risk of the different structured deposits. Finally, they looked at whether various types of disclosures altered respondents' valuations. Following is a summary of their findings:
- While investors' expectations of the FTSE 100's growth were, on average, well-aligned with the assumptions used in the author's quantitative model, investors significantly overestimated the expected returns of all structured deposits, even the most simple.
- Investors overestimated expected product returns by 1.9 percentage points per year on average, adding up to 9.7 percentage points over the five-year term.
- Investors' expectations were also significantly higher than the returns from the authors' quantitative model.
- Returns were overestimated for all five products. The overestimation ranged from 1% to 2.5%, figures that are statistically significant. Only 1.6% of respondents did not overestimate any of the products' returns, while 70% of respondents overestimated all of the products' returns, leading to the products' returns being overestimated in 86% of cases.
- Although all five structured deposits in the survey would have been unlikely to return more than simple fixed-term cash deposits, investors didn't recognize this. In other words, they didn't require a premium for the incremental risks of the products. Investors were valuing structured products as if they were risk-free.
- Once again demonstrating that overconfidence is an all-too-human trait, those thinking of themselves as above-average financial experts were 0.44 percentage points less accurate in translating their FTSE 100 expectations into product returns.
- The disclosure of likely product returns and risk had some effect on investors' ability to adjust for initial incorrect valuations. Investors who had initially overestimated returns or underestimated the risk of returns were more likely to adjust their valuations following further information.
- "Scenario" disclosures (giving investors information about what would happen under hypothetical scenarios) had little effect on product revaluation, while quantitative model returns (telling investors the likely product returns based on the authors' quantitative model) induced, on average, a 0.41 percentage point larger devaluation of structured deposits.
The authors also noted that "an FCA analysis of a large sample of UK retail structured products, including but not limited to those based on the FTSE index, suggested that products issued since 2008 and that had a maturity of three to five years on average underperformed National Savings & Investments five-year deposit rates."
Hunt, Stewart and Zaliauskas concluded that behavioral biases, combined with features of structured deposits that can exploit these biases, lead investors to possess unrealistically high expectations of the products' returns and impede their ability to evaluate and compare structured products to each other and against other deposit-based alternatives.
What's more, these products' design and distribution strategies (often using commission-driven salesforces) exploit consumer weaknesses, likely leading consumers to make mistakes in comparing the options and, thus, buy overpriced products. Sadly, they also concluded: "Our findings suggest that there are limits to how much can be solved just by providing information."
The authors' findings are entirely consistent with prior research on structured notes, which we will explore in more detail in upcoming articles.
This commentary originally appeared December 5 on ETF.com
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Me and my boyfriend are arguing over whether or not the Moon is round (circular like Earth). I say it is and he says it's not.
What is the diameter of the Moon in Kilometers? By how much is the Earth heavier than the Moon? How far is the Moon from the Earth? How old is the Moon?
What is the internal structure of the Moon?
I was just wondering, is there anyone actually 'buried' on the Moon? I believe I once heard of 3 people who died, but I can't seem to find any articles to prove this to be true.
Well, the Moon is round! So, you win this time! Really big objects like the Moon pull themselves into a sphere (like a ball). Small objects don't do this. So, your computer, your dog and even asteroids aren't big enough to pull their material into a ball.
The diameter of the Moon is 3,474 kilometers. The Earth's mass is 5.98 x 10^24 kilograms while the Moon's mass is 7.35 x 10^22 kilograms. That means the Earth weighs 5.90 x 10^24 more kilograms than the Moon. That means the Earth is just bigger all around! The Moon's average distance from the Earth is 384,467 kilometers. Like the rest of the solar system, the Moon is about 4 billion years old!
Scientists still don't know for sure what the inside of the Moon is like. The Moon does have a top crust which is rocky. Then comes the mantle which is also made of rock. Then there is a part that is partially molten. In the very middle of the Moon, there could be a small iron core.
No one is buried on the Moon. All of the astronauts who have visited the Moon have returned to Earth! There was a tragedy associated with the Apollo program that you might be thinking of...in 1967, three astronauts were killed because their module caught fire. They were still on the ground practicing for Apollo 1, which would have led the way to the Moon.
Submitted by Fawn, W. Bonetta (England), Jennifer, Megan, Jean (Louisiana, U.S.A.), Parker (California, U.S.A.), Mike
(January 9, 2001)


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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – January 23, 2019
MEDIA CONTACT: KIRA CALM LEWIS 301-446-3327 - or - email@example.com
IYANA MOORE 301-446-3313 - or – firstname.lastname@example.com
A Slice of History:Sweet Stories from the Department of Parks and Recreation
Riverdale, MD – Prince George's County offers an abundance of historic sites. Plan your next family fun day at one of the Department of Parks and Recreation's upcoming events.
WHAT: A Slice of History: The Story of Pie
WHEN: Saturday, January 26, 2019, 1 PM – 2:30 PM
WHERE: Darnall's Chance House Museum, 14800 Governor Oden Bowie Dr. Upper Marlboro, MD 20772
COST: $15; reservation is required
Celebrate National Pie Day with Darnall's Chance House Museum! Join us as Debbie Waugh of Green Spring Garden tells us about the history of pie from its medieval origins to today. Enjoy a pie and coffee reception following the presentation. Reservation Deadline: 01/24/2019
WHAT: Savor the Flavor: Tour and Tasting
WHEN: Saturday, February 16, 2019, from 1 PM – 3 PM
COST: $10; reservation is required
This winter, history is a little sweeter at Darnall's Chance Museum! Take a guided tour with our costumed interpreters of our 18th century house and then learn some interesting facts about why chocolate was so popular in Colonial America. Visitors will get to taste hot chocolate and chocolate tea made from authentic 1750s recipes. Fee: $10/person and includes house tour, a cup of hot chocolate and chocolate tea as well as other delectable sweets. Advance registration required. Tours begin at 1 PM, 2 PM, and 3 PM. Reservation Deadline: 02/12/2019
WHAT: "On Some Auspicious Day:" Antonia Ford Willard & the Civil War
WHEN: Saturday, March 23, 2019, from 4 PM – 5:30 PM
WHERE: Surratt House Museum, 9118 Brandywine Road Clinton, MD 20735
Surratt House Museum invites you to honor Women's History Month during a presentation on Antonia Ford Willard. Ford was born into a Confederate household in Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia. Beautiful and smart, she was described by Confederate general Eppa Hunton as, "much admired by the Yankee officers and had so much influence over at least one of them, that she obtained their military secrets." Ford gained notoriety in 1863 for her suspected involvement in a Confederate raid on her hometown. A subsequent imprisonment fostered a romance with Union Major Joseph C. Willard, leading to a "mixed-marriage" of Confederate and Union sympathies. Michelle Krowl of the Library of Congress will examine this unique relationship and how living and loving on both sides of the sectional divide affected her, her family, and her communities. This program is FREE. Guests are encouraged to arrive early, as seating is first come, first served.


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When we launched the PowerBlog in 2005, we had little idea that it would grow into one of the Acton Institute's most popular and powerful communications channels. Nearly 4,000 posts, and 8,000 comments later, the PowerBlog is still going strong. And for that, we heartily thank our many readers, contributors and commenters.
Now we have for the first time a dedicated editor to help sustain and grow the blog for the advancement of the "free and virtuous society." Veteran journalist Joe Carter is joining Acton as Senior Editor beginning today.
Joe also serves as an editor at the The Gospel Coalition, online editor for First Things, and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College. A 15-year Marine Corps veteran, he previously worked as the managing editor for The East Texas Tribune and the online magazine Culture11. He has also served as the Director of Research and Rapid Response for the Mike Huckabee for President campaign, as a director of communications for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, and as director of online communications for Family Research Council. He is the co-author of How to Argue like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator (Crossway).
Please join me in welcoming Joe to the PowerBlog.


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WINS I: Exploring the Natural World
WINS I is a free year-long after-school and summer science enrichment program. The WINS students participate in classroom lessons, science experiments, behind-the-scenes museum tours, and daylong, weekend and weeklong field trips—all of which are designed to help students explore the intricate relationships between plants, animals and our biological and physical environments. Sustainability and the importance of scientific knowledge to make informed decisions are interwoven throughout the curriculum.
The Academy, with its extensive scientific collections and research initiatives, public museum and world-renowned scientists, make it the ideal setting to expose the program's participants to real-life science.
During the summer, WINS students explore Philadelphia's urban ecology. Through issue-based science classes that meet three times each week, field trips and focused projects, students learn that ecology and environmental issues are as relevant in the city as they are in rural areas. A camping trip to the Poconos caps off the session and gives students a chance to compare the rural experience to their urban lives.
As the school year begins, WINS I students attend the Academy after school once each week to explore the concept of biodiversity. Using the Academy's extensive collections, the girls see first hand how organisms are related to each other and the great variety among them. Behind-the-scene tours and monthly field trips enhance the lessons.
The winter session focuses on the Earth's biomes and the unique habitats and adaptations of land flora and fauna, and evaluate the evidence to support evolution. Academy staff presentations and monthly field trips augment the activities.
With spring the WINS I students return outdoors and investigate bodies of water and aquatic organisms, focusing on waterways and shorelines of the Delaware Valley. A spring-break stay at a wetlands ecosystem and a day trip on a boat provides the girls with hands-on experience with science in the field. The session culminates in a seashore camping trip where the year's educational themes converge.


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In the mid-'80s it was considered you-put-your-peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate when bands like Black Flag dared to tippy-toe into metal territory with their punk attack. The resulting punk-metal "crossover" hybrid was derided by the late '80s as the end of the world by punk and metal purists. But time was on the side of those just looking for rock-and-roll kicks, and the crossover combo is a tasty sound that's hard to deny. Metal's rejuvenation in the past half decade has seen all manner of '80s-isms brought back after the debacle that was Big Pants nu-metal, but one common thread is that once the wall between punk and metal was broken down decades ago, it wasn't easily rebuilt. Which is a roundabout way of saying that punk-metal, far from being an outmoded '80s throwback, is in many ways the path of the future for both punk and metal — and Boston's own Ramming Speed may be one of the bands on the vanguard of this new thrash attack.
Ramming Speed have been proselytizing their hybridized gospel since 2005. "When we first started," explains drummer Jonah Livingston, "we only cared about two things: how fast could we play, and how long could we make our tours!" Hear hear, since in short order, the Speed achieved both goals, combining a mind-bendingly fast attack with a relentless international tour schedule. "We started as a bunch of dudes that wanted to be in a fun band, eating pizza, drinking beer, playing shows, and there wasn't much thought about the future or anything super serious. But once we started hitting the road, it became important, and in the last five or six years, we've really grown up as dudes."
Perhaps it's this growing up that sees the band slowly shedding its party-hearty vibe in favor of a more doom-laden post-apocalyptic image. How else to square the jovial fun-loving vibe of the band offstage with the their bludgeoning live fury and the furrowed-brow intensity of the recent work, especially on their upcoming magnum opus, the just-recorded (by Converge's Kurt Ballou at Salem's GodCity Studio) Doomed To Destroy, Destined To Die (due out later this year on an as-yet-to-be-determined label). To Livingston and Co., though, this serious/fun dichotomy has always been at the core of punk/thrash culture, where working hard and playing hard come packaged together
"When you look at, you know, photos of Slayer and Metallica and Megadeth back in the day, they were all laughing, crushing beer cans on their heads, wearing acid-washed jeans, and having an awesome time; then you listen to the records and it's all songs about war and death and suicide. For us, it's all about moving the lyrics and themes toward a place that's intense and punishing. I mean, it's hard to be aware of social and political events and then go write songs about sharks and partying and whatnot. We love drinking beers and staying up all night partying, but it's all about being self-conscious enough to know when to wink, you know?"
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View endangered whales off the coast of Cape Cod this week
Those lucky enough to be in the Cape Cod area this week should hit the coast to view one of the rarest creatures on earth.
In an aerial survey on Tuesday, researchers counted more than 100 individual right whales, with a preliminary count of more than 200 total. Officials estimate that this number represents a little less than half of the known North Atlantic right whale population. As an adult, the right whale, one of the rarest types of baleen whales, measures 45 to 55 feet in length and weighs up to ninety tons. It has been listed as an endangered species since 1970.
The whales are attracted to the waters off the southern coast of Massachusetts because they are particularly rich in zooplankton (tiny organisms that the whales feed on) this year.
A survey of zooplankton earlier in the week suggests that the whales will continue to congregate in the area for several more days, possibly even a week. The whales can be seen from the shore, and are as close as a few yards offshore to about a quarter-mile out.
As a result of the whale feeding frenzy, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries has issued a warning for boaters to avoid the animals. It's against federal law for a vessel to get within 500 yards of them. Boats in the Cape Cod Bay area are advised to proceed with caution, reduce speed (less than 10 knots), and post lookouts to avoid collisions with the enormous mammals. The advisory will be lifted when the whales leave the area.
Collisions with vessels are the major cause of human-induced mortality for the right whale. The whales, which practice surface and subsurface feeding, are often difficult to see, and in the past this has led to fatal injuries from collisions with boats.
Anyone interested in seeing the whales can do so just by walking on the beach. The whales are gathered around Race Point, but also can been seen down to Long Point in Provincetown and inside to Truro.
For more information on Right Whales, visit the Right Whale Conservation Program.
— Madeline Grimes
10 Natural Wonders to See Before They Disappear


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The food choices on my diet are easy. What I eat must taste great and provide great nutrition. Great taste is subjective and certainly varies from person to person. But great nutrition is objective.
All of us are still learning about nutrition. But we do know the foods that are good for us and those that we should avoid.
So why is the diabetes diet the most controversial part of controlling it? The controversy rages over just one issue – whether we should be eating a low or high carb diet.
The most appropriate level of carbohydrates is the only controversial part of the American Diabetes Association's new nutrition recommendations. But my diet is a moderate one, and you can tweak it to include the amount of carbohydrates that you decide to eat.
What I eat keeps evolving. In the dozen or so years since I got my diabetes diagnosis my diet has changed dozens of times. Nutrition has become one of my biggest interests, and I think about what to eat more than I think about sex. Not many men can say that!
Judging from the questions I get from my correspondents, women think about diet a lot more than men do. I guess that this is because they generally shop and cook for their families.
Several recent questions, in fact, prompted me to weigh in here with my diet recommendations. For example, Kelly would like to retrain her husband, her son, and herself to eat better. Mary Lee wants to know the easiest eating plan to follow. Kabir wonders if I could make a list of foods that boost our health, conform to the glycemic index, and are full of antioxidants.
I don't have to make a list of the best foods. George Mateljan, the founder and original owner of Health Valley Foods, has thought about food even more than I have. His site has a superb list of the world's healthiest foods.
I generally agree with George's food choices. But I am more concerned with the glycemic values of foods than he is, because he writes for a more general audience than for those of us with diabetes.
My pantry is pretty bare compared with what most people have. I like to keep it as simple as possible.
I keep my recipes simple too. When there are more than six ingredients – including two or three spices – there are too many for me. My diet would make Linus in the Peanuts comic strip happy. He decided not to drink something when he saw what it said on the side of the package. "It's full of ingredients!" he exclaimed.
My diet includes almost all the fruits and vegetables. Generally, I prefer to steam my vegetables, although the microwave is great for winter squash and boiling is best for greens, like chard. I go easy on some of those so-called root vegetables – the ones that grow underground – especially potatoes and beets. I also go easy on dried fruit, like raisins, dates, and prunes. They are certainly great in low doses, but eating a lot of them spikes my blood glucose.
Legumes are a wonder food. Chana dal, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, soybeans, lentils, and others (all except broad beans) are low glycemic and high in protein.
The only grains I eat are barley and corn. The other grains, especially most varieties of rice and anything made from wheat flour – including almost all bread, crackers, cookies, and other pastries – are too high glycemic.
Nuts and seeds are also important in my diet. Almonds, walnuts, Brazil nuts, and hazelnuts are especially nutritious. Flax seeds, sesame seeds, and pumpkin seeds also offer a lot of the nutrients we need. Brazil nuts are the best source of selenium that we have, so good in fact that the "UC Berkeley Wellness Letter," to which I subscribe, recommends eating no more that five a day. Walnuts and flax seeds are a good source of the essential Omega-3 fatty acids. Pumpkin seeds are high in zinc. And I remember to choose unsalted nuts when I shop.
I like to add a little fresh fruit or a few nuts to the yogurt that I often choose to lunch on. I make sure to shop only for plain, nonfat, organic yogurt. I sweeten it with a non-caloric sweetener.
My other favorite lunch is a salad of vegetables and beans. A salad has too many ingredients for me to prepare, so it is the usual meal that I have when I eat out. A large study in this month's issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association reported that people who eat salads have higher levels of vitamins C and E, folic acid, and carotenoids.
Eggs are a wonderful food too, especially if truly free range chickens produce them. I buy all my eggs from a local farmer's market vendor, who I know I can trust. Michael Pollan has reported on the scam that goes by the name "free range". I love my eggs poached or hard boiled.
I am not a vegetarian. For dinner I eat wild fatty fish – particularly salmon – about twice a week. That's the recommended level, because no matter how good this fish is in providing Omega-3 fatty acids, it does also contain mercury. Besides salmon, I also eat canned sardines and herring, the two other most readily available fish that are high in Omega-3. I also eat ground bison, which is lower in saturated fat than beef, and boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
I cook all of these at low temperature in my oven on a cedar roasting plank. This is an easy, simple, and tasty way to cook.
I don't fry anything any more. Too many AGEs.
Because I eat so little now that I am using Byetta, I make sure to get enough fiber. It's generally better to get such nutrients from our food than from supplements, but few of us, myself included, can readily get enough fiber that way. So with each meal I take four psyllium husk caps.
At the time of my diabetes diagnosis the conventional wisdom was still that all fats were bad. Nobody woke me and the rest of the world up as much as Udo Erasmus did with his book, Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill.
In addition to the essential Omega-3 fats, for cooking the only oil I use is olive oil, which is high in monounsaturated fatty acids. I also eat avocados, which are also among the highest in this good fat. This fatty fruit is the basis of one of the three great appetizers.
My friend Gretchen Becker once complained that there are so few foods that we can safely eat. She was particularly appalled by the AGEs that cooking foods at high temperature produce.
I do find plenty of good tasting foods that are good for me to eat. But I also have a list of what to avoid.
The newest addition to that list of negatives is foods high in AGEs. I have also learned to avoid prepared foods that are high in sodium, and I will soon be writing an article about a great new salt substitute that is coming to market.
I avoid the "fats that kill," that Udo taught me about. This are primarily the transfats, which we have recently recognized as the worst of all fats. I won't eat anything that has the words "partially hydrogenated" on the nutrition label.
Saturated fat is almost as bad for us, especially for our cholesterol levels. I try to minimize it, but have not yet learned how to avoid it completely.
My biggest problem is with dairy products, even though I don't drink milk. But butter works wonders on most vegetables. I also love to melt fresh mozzarella cheese on Morningstar Farms Veggie Breakfast Sausage Patties. I often have this combo for breakfast, choosing mozzarella because it is lower in saturated fat than other cheeses.
I now avoid non-organic food almost completely. And I reject all farmed-raised fish in favor of the wild.
Going easy on starches, especially rice, potatoes, and wheat flour has finally become easy for me. I can do without rice completely, but I do love potatoes, which have a lot of nutrition going for them, even while they are high glycemic. I have switched from the highest glycemic potatoes, baked Burbank russets, to lower glycemic varieties, especially the small new potatoes, and enjoy them steamed or boiled.
One of the hardest dietary lessons for me to learn is something that I don't remember ever seeing in writing. Maybe it can help others.
This lesson is to avoid those food that I like so much that I can't stop eating or drinking them. My list of those foods that I like so well includes kefir, stinky cheese, and prunes. I have had to learn to go cold turkey on them.
I'm sure that you will note that David's Diabetes Diet talks only about foods and does not include a single recipe. That's because the food choices are the basis of a diet, and the recipes will follow.
Do you have recipes that you can share based on these nutrition principles? If you do, I think all of us would appreciate you comments.
This article is based on an earlier version of my article published by HealthCentral.
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